asty.org – the homepage of Chris Allegretta

A new version of CMatrix? On my blog?

Posted on May 7, 2024May 7, 2024 by chrisa

It’s more likely than you think.

So as I said, I would push more updates. Since I have been re-homing my skills, I decided to tear apart the old CMatrix code and remove a lot of crufty stuff, including the need for all the ancillary fonts / utilities to see the symbols and the rather ugly default of standard Roman/English alphabet characters. I also added a pre-calculation option (-p) to see if it can improve performance on older or lower-end systems.

In order to accomplish this streamlining, this version does require ncursesw, AKA ncurses with wide-character support, in order to work. Given how long this has been around, I hope it won’t be too onerous of a requirement.

NB: This …

OK, I’ll update more frequently…

Posted on May 3, 2024May 3, 2024 by chrisa

I’ve been a bit of a perfectionist with my posts, to the effect of not ever posting anything it seems. I’ll do a bit better here and may post a few post fragments occasionally. I’ll just post to Mastodon/Twitter the larger ones. This is a blog after all!

Interesting reading I did recently: Installing Nix in a Qubes AppVM. Qubes and Nix together, it’s like chocolate and peanut butter – so perfect!

For those that haven’t given Nix a try, you don’t have to run the actual distribution (NixOS), it actually runs on almost every Linux distribution and each user can have their own setup. It’s quite incredible. Here is some intro documentation on Nix to whet your palate. …

Internet Money Wallet Review: So Far So Good As a Wallet For Pulsechain Tokens and Swaps 👍

Posted on February 15, 2024February 15, 2024 by chrisa

Pros:

Good support for Pulsechain tokens, and displaying prices in-wallet
Supports swaps in-wallet and uses multiple DEXes to shop for the best deal
Allows passive income of PLS token fees from swaps by holding T.I.M.E token in-wallet
Supports both Chrome and mobile devices

Cons:

Much less well known compared to MetaMask
Despite 2 external code audits, some default OpSec choices I don’t like (e.g. default unlimited spend limit)
Slower to load balances, often requires a manual refresh to get up-to-date balances
No Firefox extension

If you are a user on PulseChain (or want to be), you have probably struggled with finding a good wallet for self-custody. Obviously the best wallet for any significant amount of coin is a hardware wallet …

Hello again

Posted on February 9, 2024February 9, 2024 by chrisa

Hello. Just a quick note that I’m going to try and push out some reviews/articles this weekend/next week.

Unfortunately I finally was bitten by the COVID bug as of Saturday, so it’s been a slow recovery. Even today 6 days later I still don’t feel the best.

Personal updates: no longer with Google. Made it almost 13 years. Trying to focus on the positive and how good things were for so long, and not how bad the end was. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn if you are a former colleague. …

I’m (Back) on Mastodon

Posted on April 12, 2023April 12, 2023 by chrisa

I have actually switched some time ago, but it’s a good time to point to my Mastodon Profile where I still (occasionally) post useful or interesting things. I had an instance in the past, but general fatigue of Social Networks made it stick this time, and I’m quite happy with the result. Mastodon feels like what the web felt like before 2000. Regular people putting out information they find interesting, and no corporate manipulation or obsessive monetization where ‘you are the product’.

Ironically though, what Mastodon really needs are people who are constantly publishing new content, whereas I generally use Social Media as consuming information.

Why is Mastodon great? Well it is a Federated space and comes with all the …

Welcome to my new home

Posted on January 3, 2023January 3, 2023 by chrisa

Hello there!

Well after a long hiatus I am moving my web services from Digital Ocean (who I still highly recommend) over to a Bare Metal server on OVHCloud. I have always wanted to do more day-to-day management of my servers, and this is my first foray into doing that,

I will post some more details about what my new setup looks like, and what the software behind the scenes which make it up, but for now just wanted to say welcome to my new instance, and to let me know if you run into any issues with dead links.…